Falke’s Captive Read Online Free PDF Page A

slight break in the trees. “It’s probably just a deer trail, but I’m sure you can get the ATV up it. The locals do it all the time.”
    “So, that’s how you did it.” He gave her a little smile, which she returned with a look of wide-eyed innocence. “I see how you are. ‘Let’s split up,’” he quoted the suggestion she’d made when they first arrived. “Send Tim into the thicket while Beth takes the easy trail.”
    Beth chuckled, watching him trek toward the trail.
    “I’ll remember this,” he teased.
    She rolled her eyes when he turned his back. Day one of their two months working together. It was going to be an interesting summer.
     
    Kelan smelled a female.
    He couldn’t quite open his eyes for some reason, and his legs were too heavy to move, but he could smell a woman.
    Not perfume. The sweet tang of warm flesh. He breathed in deep and purred, wishing whoever she was would come closer so he could taste her.
    Then he realized how dry his tongue felt, how thirsty he was. The ground felt awful hard, and flat, and cold. Where had the sun gone? Had he lain here the rest of the day?
    “Hey, big boy.”
    His ear twitched toward the sultry voice. It seemed familiar.
    “You finally waking up?”
    His right ear stung like hell. The back of his neck ached, and his butt cheek hurt too.
    It all came rushing back to him. The tranquilizer dart in his ass. He growled and finally pried open his eyes. Steel bars surrounded him.
    “It’s okay, baby. You’re okay.”
    The hell he was. He forced himself to his feet and turned a circle, spotted the door to the cage and bumped his nose against it. God damn it! How had he let himself get captured?
    “Hey there, don’t hurt yourself.”
    He turned again to face his captor and growled.
    Beth? He almost couldn’t believe his eyes, but the sexy grad student stood on the other side of the bars, and part of him was tempted to take a swipe at her. He didn’t only because she had such a sweet voice. And those kind emerald-green eyes he’d all but drowned in the other night. But she was supposed to be out hiking somewhere, not staring at him like an oddity on display at a Ripley’s exhibit.
    Anger simmered beneath his skin, and he let it show with a vicious snarl.
    Was this all a set up? Did he and Reidar miss something, some kind of sign, the other night in the pub? Fuck. He was usually a better judge of character, better able to read people, but this woman had him doubting himself.
    “Hey. You’re okay,” she murmured, pushing up her wire-rimmed glasses as she bent to peer into his eyes. She wore a lab coat with University of Washington embroidered above the pocket on her more than ample chest.
    At least she’d told the truth about her college.
    Where the hell was he? Was all that talk about hiking with friends in Wenatchee just bullshit?
    “Looks like the drug finally wore off. Didn’t think you’d be down so long.”
    She shot him with the dart? The bitch!
    A gorgeous one, but a bitch nonetheless. He bared his teeth and hissed. Let me out of here!
    She stumbled back and landed on a chair. “Whoa,” she whispered as she shook her head and touched her temple.
    Damn, he must not be all with it yet. He might have sent that thought to her. In catamount form, he and his brothers had the ability to send their thoughts to humans. Not a good thing in this case. Not if he was some goddamned lab experiment.
    “That was weird.” She tilted her head and muttered to herself, “Get it together, Beth. You start acting like Dr. Dolittle and the professor might reconsider letting you participate in this field assignment.”
    Field assignment? So maybe she hadn’t hauled him back to the university. He glanced around the narrow room. A door centered on one of the long sides. No windows, although an A/C unit hummed high in the short wall straight ahead of him. Behind him sat an ATV. And beyond that a set of big double doors like those of a tractor trailer. A mobile lab?